Monday, July 15, 2013

Terrorism and Online Identity Theft

Part One: Terrorism and Technology

CyberTerrorist Group - Anonymous :

Anonymous is a cyber terrorist group that originally
started from a small grassroots level in 2003 and has since propagated to a
sophisticated organization with members from all over the world. It is a leaderless decentralized community
which was originated on the Internet and is known for its hacks and DDoS
attacks on various government, religious, and corporate websites. By using "Memes", which can be
anything from smiley faces to evil ideas, members of Anonymous "operated
in (online) disguise and have been known to transmit terrorist memes through
online channels such as imageboards, chatrooms, and even YouTube videos"
(ExtermisProject, 2013).

A
meme is defined as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of
behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in one or more individual minds, and
which can reproduce itself; thereby jumping from mind to mind. “Memetic engineering” is currently being
studied to determine the effects of 'memes' on human behavior. It is this memetic effect that Anonymous is
attempting to utilize in their attempt to create cyber terrorism
(ExtermisProject, 2013).

Throughout the past two decades or so,
they have perpetrated numerous attacks such as the 4chan raids (2004-2007),
Encyclopedia Dramatica (2004-present), Project Chanology (2008), and Operation
Payback Is a Bitch in 2010. In the years
since, Anonymous has continued their barrage of Hacks, DDOS attacks and
protests with the intended goal and results being mass mayhem throughout the
digital world. (ExtermisProject, 2013)

Anonymous has also attacked such websites
as Amazon.com, PayPal.com, the website of Gene Simmons of Kiss, the US
Copyright Office, the British law firm ACS:Law, the British nightclub Ministry
of Sound, and the Spanish copyright society sgae.es. (ExtermisProject, 2013)

In countries such as Australia, the
Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and the U.S.A, dozens of people have
been arrested for their involvement in Anonymous since 2009. The first to be jailed was Dmitriy Guzner, an
American nineteen-year-old, for his role in a DDOS attack on The Church of Scientology’s computer
systems that had been sanctioned by Anonymous.
His charge was the "unauthorized impairment of a protected
computer". In November 2009 he was sentenced to 366 days in US federal
prison. (Corbett, 2009)

While
new laws which have recently been proposed by the National Security Council and
the Obama Administration, such as The Comprehensive National Cybersecurity
Initiative, are trying to put a stop to the growing leak in online security,
which is producing such extremist groups as Anonymous, more study of these
groups is needed to increase global awareness and new laws need to be
constructed to fill the gaps in the legal system that do not cover the
development of technology as it is today.

Part Two:
Identity Theft

Case #1:
“Nicole McCabe Assassinates a War Criminal”

This is the case of Nicole McCabe who was
an Australian woman living in Israel.
One day she heard over the radio that she was one of 26 people
implicated in the assassination of Hamas chief Mahmoud-al-Mabhoud in Dubai,
India. Although she had not left Israel
in months, Interpol added her to their most-wanted list.

After further investigation, the
assassination was linked to an elite Israeli covert force named Mossad. Mossad had stolen the passports of 26
individuals and gave them to the assassins so that they could enter Dubai. It just happened to be that Nicole McCabe’s
was one of those passports.

Even
though McCabe and the other victims of the crime were eventually found to be
innocent, they were still held accountable.
Neither the Australian embassy nor the international community would
help them, other than to provide them with new passports although it seems the
information that was gathered to create the false passports for the terrorists
did not actually come from the originals - it had been gathered from an outside
source such as off of the internet - meaning that there was nothing that any of
them could have done to prevent the theft.

Unfortunately, many places on the internet
that deal with the public require sensitive information such as address, phone
number, social security number in order to do business. Not all security systems are equal and even
the touted 128 bit encryption can today readily be cracked with a dedicated
program. In essence, this is a
vulnerability for identity theft to occur where little or nothing can be done
to prevent it short of not dealing over the internet and only paying cash for
purchases. (Hahn, 2012)

Case #2: “Harrun Majeed Buys Some Pizza”

Harrun Majeed, a 14-year veteran of the
Navy bought his son a birthday cake at a local Publix supermarket. When he got home, he came to realize that his
credit card was missing. Suspecting that
he had dropped it somewhere, he immediately called his bank to report the lost
card and cancelled it.

The bank informed Majeed that the card had
already been used to buy two pizzas in the same shopping center that the Publix
was in. He surmised that he had dropped
the card in the parking lot and someone had picked it up and bought the
pizzas. Majeed called the authorities
and reported the fraud. When the police
arrived at the restaurant to investigate, they found the thief still there
waiting for his pizza.

Incredibly, the thief turned out to be a
Dr. Richard Ludwig, a dentist with a net worth of about $3 or 4 million. Even more incredible, he had about $250 in
cash in his wallet at the time of his arrest.
He had even signed the slip using his own name.

Luckily, Majeed had the charges reversed
and his card was reimbursed for the $40 that Ludwig had charged.

Majeed could have avoided all of this if
he had a) immediately put his card away in his wallet, b) made sure that he had
his card when he got into his vehicle or c) used cash to make his purchase.
(Hahn, 2012)

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About Me

Hello! My name is Michelle Hoffmann and I am the
owner/editor and publisher of The 24KaratMarketer Ezine - your guide to
home business success. Along with publishing my ezine, I am also a
student of nature, photographer, website designer, writer, internet
marketer, ezine publisher, criminal justice and HSEM graduate, etc.

When I am not working on my ezine or other websites, I like to study things
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